Eskigediz is a town ('' belde'') in the

Gediz District Gediz District is a district of the Kütahya Province of Turkey. Its seat is the town of Gediz.Kütahya Province, Turkey.Belde Belediyesi
Turkey Civil Administration Departments Inventory. Retrieved 22 May 2023. Its population is 2,768 (2022). Eskigediz is the old site of Gediz, and has a history dating back to antiquity; the new town now called Gediz was built from scratch after Eskigediz was destroyed by the

1970 Gediz earthquake The 1970 Gediz earthquake (also known as the 1970 Kütahya-Gediz earthquake) struck western Turkey on 28 March at about 23:02 local time, with an estimated magnitude of 7.2 on the scale. The event killed 1,086 people, injured 1,260 people, and ...

Geography

Eskigediz is located on the upper reaches of the Gediz Çayı, 7 km from the new town of Gediz and 65 km southwest of the city of

Kütahya Kütahya () (historically, Cotyaeum or Kotyaion, Ancient Greek, Greek: Κοτύαιον) is a city in western Turkey which lies on the Porsuk River, Porsuk river, at 969 metres above sea level. It is inhabited by some 578,640 people (2022 estimate) ...

. The town is located on hilly terrain, and just east of the town is a hill known as Hisarardı Kale, which is where the settlement originated. The Eskigediz area was historically strategically significant because it controls the only pass through the Murat Dağ mountains.

History

Until 1970, Eskigediz was simply called Gediz. After the town was destroyed in the

, it was rebuilt from scratch at a site called Karılar Pazarı on the plain below. The name Gediz was transferred to the new settlement. The ancient and medieval Kadoi ( grc, Κάδοι) was located immediately east of Eskigediz, on a hilltop now called Hisarardı Kale. To the east and south of the hill is a plateau which was historically used as a marble quarry; stone from here was used as building material that was later reused as spolia. Remains of an ancient aqueduct are the oldest intact structure at Eskigediz; two ancient marble statues were also reused as spolia in the later Debboy bridge. Kadoi's earliest known mention was by Polybios in the 2nd century BCE. In Roman times, the town was located in Phrygia Epiktetos, near the border of

Phrygia In classical antiquity, Phrygia ( ; grc, Φρυγία, ''Phrygía'' ) was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empires ...

, Mysia, and

Lydia Lydia (Lydian language, Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, ''Śfarda''; Aramaic: ''Lydia''; el, Λυδία, ''Lȳdíā''; tr, Lidya) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the mod ...

. (The sources for this period are

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see ...

Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephan of Byzantium ( la, Stephanus Byzantinus; grc-gre, Στέφανος Βυζάντιος, ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD), was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethni ...

, and Ptolemy.) The 6th-century ''

Synekdemos The ''Synecdemus'' or ''Synekdemos'' ( el, Συνέκδημος) is a geographic text, attributed to Hierocles, which contains a table of administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists of their cities. The work is dated to the reign o ...

'' of Hierokles later mentions Kadoi as part of Phrygia Pakatiane. Kadoi was also a Christian diocese attested consistently from the 7th through 12th centuries in the Notitiae. Until around the 9th century, it was listed as subordinate to Laodikeia, and after that as under

Hierapolis Hierapolis (; grc, Ἱεράπολις, lit. "Holy City") was originally a Phrygian cult centre of the Anatolian mother goddess of Cybele and later a Greek city. Its location was centred upon the remarkable and copious hot springs in classica ...

until the 12th century. Gediz (i.e. present-day Eskigediz) was administered as a sanjak under the Seljuk dynasty as well as the succeeding

Germiyan The Germiyanids ( tr, Germiyanoğulları Beyliği or ''Germiyan Beyliği'') was a prominent Anatolian beylik established by the Oghuz Turkish tribes (probably the Afshar tribe) after the decline of Sultanate of Rûm. However, while the be ...

beylik. The oldest mosque in what is now Eskigediz, the Umurbey mosque (also called the Serdar mosque), dates from the Seljuk period. Gediz appears to have come under Ottoman control by 1414. The source for this is a stone inscription from 1414, commemorating the endowment of a külliye complex in Kütahya by the last Germiyan bey, Yakub II. The inscription includes a reference to Yakub acquiring the village of Ilıcasu, subordinate to Gediz, for endowing the külliye. The inscription then mentions that the reigning Ottoman sultan, Mehmed I, signed off on these transactions, which, according to Mustafa Çetin Varlık, indicates that the places mentioned were under Ottoman administration by then. This inscription mentions Gediz as Gedüs, which is an older Turkish spelling of the name. Two mosques in present-day Eskigediz were built under Ottoman auspices in the 1500s. The first was the Kurşunlu Cami, built in 1540 by one Mustafa bin Hamza. It was the first domed mosque in Gediz. The second was the Ulu Cami, built in 1589/90 (998 AH) on a commission from Gazanfer Ağa, who was Kapı Ağa under the Ottoman sultan

Murad III Murad III ( ota, مراد ثالث, Murād-i sālis; tr, III. Murad; 4 July 1546 – 16 January 1595) was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1574 until his death in 1595. His rule saw battles with the Habsburgs and exhausting wars with the Saf ...

. Several other foundations in Gediz by Gazanfer Ağa, who was a native of the town, are known, including a

hamam A hammam ( ar, حمّام, translit=ḥammām, tr, hamam) or Turkish bath is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited f ...

, a

han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

, and a madrasa. The Ulu Cami was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of 1970 and rebuilt in 1990. Its original architecture was typical of early classical Ottoman architecture. Also in the 1500s, the Tapu

Defter A ''defter'' (plural: ''defterler'') was a type of tax register and land cadastre in the Ottoman Empire. Description The information collected could vary, but ''tahrir defterleri'' typically included details of villages, dwellings, household ...

#438, from the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, listed Gediz as a ''

nahiye A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' in the

Sanjak of Kütahya The Sanjak of Kütahya was a second-level province (''sanjak'') of the Ottoman Empire. Kütahya was the capital of the Anatolian beylik of Germiyan, and became part of the Ottoman state in 1381 through the marriage of the future Sultan Bayezid I w ...

. It was later reclassified as a '' kaza'' in the late 1800s. Evliya Çelebi visited Gediz in the 1600s and left an account of the town (which he also wrote as ''Gedüs'') in his ''

Seyahatnâme ''Seyahatname'' ( ota, سياحتنامه, Seyāḥatnāme, book of travels) is the name of a literary form and tradition whose examples can be found throughout centuries in the Middle Ages around the Islamic world, starting with the Arab travel ...

''. He attributed the town's name to a king of Rum named Gedüs. He wrote that the town was a ''

zeamet Ziamet was a form of land tenure in the Ottoman Empire, consisting in grant of lands or revenues by the Ottoman Sultan to an individual in compensation for their services, especially military services. The ziamet system was introduced by Osman I, wh ...

'' with 13 neighborhoods and about 2,000 houses, which were covered with earthen roofs. It had 20 mosques; he specifically referred to the Hacı Mustafa mosque, which he called the old mosque, and the Gazanfer Ağa mosque in the town bazar. The castle, which he wrote was locally called "Canbaz Kale", had recently been destroyed – he mentioned that in 1676, during the

Celali revolts The Celali rebellions ( tr, Celalî ayaklanmaları), were a series of rebellions in Anatolia of irregular troops led by bandit chiefs and provincial officials known as ''celalî'', ''celâli'', or ''jelālī'', against the authority of the Ottoma ...

, one Kuyucu Murad Paşa had ordered its destruction to prevent the rebels from being able to use it. Evliya also wrote that supposedly, once every 30 years, "a famous group of acrobats" would come to Gediz and climb to the top of the castle rock with ropes. At the end of the Ottoman period, wrote that Gediz (i.e. Eskigediz) had partly derived its prosperity from its trade connection with İzmir. He also noted that the town's houses were covered with black clay soil, which he said gave the town a "depressing" appearance.

References

{{Gediz District Populated places in Gediz District Town municipalities in Turkey